


Toujours la Même

by phoenixflight



Series: Still the Same [1]
Category: Call Me By Your Name (2017)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Coffee Shops, Fix-It, Friendship/Love, Healthy Relationships, Infidelity, Multi, Rough Sex, Unresolved Sexual Tension, and not so much, movie verse, no bashing female characters, oliver and elio are hopeless and they're lucky their friends love them
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-17
Updated: 2018-02-17
Packaged: 2019-03-20 05:01:41
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,103
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13710390
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/phoenixflight/pseuds/phoenixflight
Summary: Oliver got married on a balmy spring morning three days after he learned Elio was coming to school in New York. Professor Perlman had added an aside in his letter of congratulations –By the way, Elio will be at Julliard this fall.





	Toujours la Même

Oliver got married on a balmy spring morning three days after he learned Elio was coming to school in New York. Professor Perlman had added an aside in his letter of congratulations – _By the way, Elio will be at Julliard this fall._

The ceremony was at his parent’s country club upstate, and when he stood under the chuppah with Trish, he felt like there were two people inside him, two hearts thundering, two lives struggling in too small skin. When Trish smiled at him, more radiant than he had ever seen her, he thought of their long history, the way she looked with paint on her face, how seeing her furious made him hard, her sly jokes, her kisses, and his heart squeezed with love for her. And then when he made his vows and heard his own name on his lips, he felt like Odysseus kissing Calypso, knowing Penelope was not waiting, because had told her he was never coming home.

He and Trish had known each other since they were children at synagogue in Westchester, when he had broken one of her crayons and she had hit him over the head with her doll. Really, not much had changed since then, except now when she was angry she fucked him within an inch of his life and then climbed off before he came. During stuffy dinner parties she whispered cutting commentary in his ear until he had to excuse himself to laugh in the bathroom. She painted until the small hours of the night and woke him up sometimes swearing at her canvas in the other room. At any party, she loved to be the center of attention while he was content quietly conversing in a corner.

After a few sexual encounters as teenagers, they had gone to different colleges, and reconnected in ‘81, when she moved back to New York from the Art Institute of Chicago. They fell easily into a relationship, but, Oliver remembered within a month of being married, there was a reason they had been on and off so frequently since then. They were good friends, and loved each other, but they fought.

She was stuck on a painting and snappish. He was overwhelmed with papers and short. She accused him of being distant, he accused her of being demanding. She wished he wanted to go out more, he told her he was busy. “If you never want to do anything with me, why did you marry me?” she yelled. He shoved her against a wall and kissed her. They fucked hard and she left vicious red scratch mark down his back and across his thighs.

Afterward, relaxed and smiling, she’d murmured, “You’re still a workaholic.” He’d kissed her head, breathing in the familiar scent of her hair, and remembered lying by the pool in the Italian summer, work the last thing on his mind. It was just the city life getting to him, he told himself. The tenure track grind. Of course real life is harder than vacation. No one said being married was going to be easy.

They fought about housework, they fought about money. Oliver thought she was frivolous with her parents’ money, she thought he was foolish for renouncing his own family’s wealth. They fought about children even though they fundamentally agreed that neither was ready. How was it possible to fight about something you agreed on? Oliver wondered after another infuriating and exhausting evening.

But she was beautiful when she was angry, and brilliant when she was happy. When she put Marvin Gaye in the cassette player, and pulled him close to dance in the living room, he clutched her to him and loved her, trying to love her enough to drown everything else out.

The first week of September they’d had a good weekend. On Friday she’d had a gallery opening which had gone off with aplomb, and she had been radiant as the darling of the day. The next day they’d taken a walk through Central Park in the beautiful autumn colors and had dinner at their favorite restaurant. They both knew that the start of classes the following week would take Oliver away, so they were savoring the last moments. On Sunday they lay in bed until almost two in the afternoon, making love lazily, eating chocolate and leftovers, and laughing about nothing as sunlight streamed across the sheets.

On Monday morning as he was leaving for his first day of classes, she’d accosted him in her underwear, waving the newspaper and beaming. The gallery opening had gotten a review, just a few lines, but glowing praise. They kissed, elated, and he left for work with bubbles of happiness in his chest like champagne.

The feeling lasted all the way through morning classes, until he was in his office at lunch, thumbing through the mail, and his hands stilled on an envelope addressed in an achingly familiar script.

_I know my father has already told you, and I don’t know if you care, but I wanted you to hear it from me. I’ve moved to New York. I start at Julliard next week._

Then came something heavily crossed out, but when he held it up to the light he could make out the original ink. _Don’t think I came because of you._

The defensive arrogance was so Elio that Oliver’s chest squeezed painfully and he felt the two conflicting lives inside him squirming. He looked at the return address, student housing at Julliard, just 40 blocks south of where Oliver was standing now, and had a mad, almost physical urge to run out of the building, abandon his afternoon classes, forget dinner with Trish, arrive out of breath on Elio’s doorstep with nothing but the clothes on his back.

That was such a stupid, selfish thought that he actually laughed at himself, and put the letter away. He arrived fifteen minutes early for his next lecture and busied himself preparing for his mid-week faculty meeting.

But that evening as he was gathering papers into his bag, about to head home to his apartment, to Trish, to his life, his eye fell on Elio’s letter again. Before he could think better of it, he pulled out a sheet of paper and scribbled, _Good to hear from you. Congratulations on Julliard, I hope it is everything going well with the move and you are enjoying the city. You must have had your first classes this week? Good luck with everything, Oliver._

He posted it on the way out of the office and went home.

They started a correspondence, writing letters to one another like they were still halfway around the world although it was really no more than a 15 minute taxi ride. Innocuous notes about his work and Elio’s school, but they felt sordid somehow. Maybe it was that he never mentioned Trish in them, and Elio never asked, like they were creating a whole fictional world where she didn’t even exist, and it twisted him up with guilt inside; so much so that he finally mentioned to her, casually, that he was writing to the Perlman’s son, who was at school in New York.

“That’s nice. Why don’t you have him over for dinner?”

Impossible to have his two worlds collide. “Just busy, I guess.” He kissed her. “I barely have time for just you, remember? I can’t go having dinner with other people.”

She rolled her eyes. “You had dinner with the Dean.” But she looped her arms around his neck and kissed him back, and as he pulled off her panties he tried to ignore the feeling that he was telling a lie.

 

It went on for more than a year. The next summer, Elio went to Italy with his family, and they didn’t correspond at all. Somehow it felt more intimate, more transgressive to write or receive letters from that familiar place. The idea of reading Elio’s descriptions of lazy mornings under the peach trees, midnight swims, or long bike rides would feel like reading erotica. Equally, writing about his life in New York would make the separation between them painfully clear.

Autumn brought rioting colors in Central Park, a heavier teaching load than ever, and more letters from Elio, who was also working hard.

Trish’s parents took them out for dinner uptown a week before Thanksgiving. In-laws were always painful, although to be fair, his own family was no better. Oliver almost choked on escargot when Trish’s mother said, “Why aren’t you pregnant yet, love? Is there something wrong with the sex?”

“Mom!” Trish snapped.

“Well, I’m just asking, love. You’re not getting any younger.”

The taxi home was stuffy with furious silence. As they arrived back at their building and got in the elevator, Oliver could feel Trish vibrating with anger beside him. Usually that energy of hers excited him, but tonight he just felt tired. “Don’t take it out on me that your mother is a pushy cow.”

“I didn’t see you standing up for me,” she said tightly.

“What was I supposed to say?”

“You could have changed the subject.” The keys rattled in her hands and she shoved the apartment door open more forcefully than necessary.

Oliver rubbed his temples. His head hurt. “I just didn’t want to get involved.”

“No, of course you didn’t. You only do things that are easy.”

“That’s not true!”

“Oh yes? When was the last time you did something that actually challenged you? That actually scared you?”

He bit his lip, assaulted by a sense memory of lying on the grass in the warm sun, reaching out to touch Elio’s mouth for the first time.

She misread his expression. “You can’t even remember! You’ll live your whole life in between your dusty books, living vicariously through Heraclitus! I want to do things with my life! I don’t want to be tied down with boring children and a boring husband.” She slammed the door to her studio behind her, leaving him standing in the living room with his jacket still on, heart thundering in his ears.

Walking over to the dining table he took a sheet of paper and, hand shaking, wrote a single line. _Want to have coffee?_ Then he carried it down to the lobby to post before he could talk himself out of it. As soon as the letter was out of his fingers, swallowed by the mail shoot, he wished he could take it back.

The next eight days were an agony of chilly silences and waspish comments from Trish, snide rejoinders on his own part that made him cold with guilt, and through it all the sick anticipation of Elio’s response.

When it finally came, it was equally short.

_When and where?_

They agreed to meet in a café one of Oliver’s colleagues recommended, on the south side of Midtown, not quite East Village. It remained unspoken that this was far enough from their usual haunts that no one they knew might meet them. Walking down East 21st Street in broad daylight, Oliver felt clandestine, adulterous. His heart pounded as he approached the door, and the tinkle of the shop bell sounded like an alarm.

He ordered a coffee and sat at a small table by the window with his back to the door so he wouldn’t be gawking at everyone who came in, waiting. He was so focused on not twitching at the sound of the bell that he didn’t notice Elio until he was standing beside him.

“Elio,” he choked. Half rising out of his seat, Oliver didn’t know whether to shake his hand, or reach out to embrace him like he longed to.

Elio solved the dilemma for him by taking the other seat at the table without offering either. “Hello, Oliver.” His voice was friendly and even, deliberately calm, obviously guarded. And oh that guardedness hurt, although he deserved it and more.

Oliver drank him with his eyes. He had a stylish haircut and wore a scarf and peacoat in the chic style he saw in his undergrad classes. New York winter had left him paler than Oliver remembered, but there was a healthy flush on his cheeks from the cold. Realizing he’d been staring, he tried to look away, but Elio was appraising him just as frankly and caught his gaze, giving him a little smirk that told him he saw Oliver’s embarrassment and was amused. When had Elio gained that veneer of control over his confidence? He’d always been by turns bold and abashed with himself, but rarely collected in this calm way. Of course, two and a half years changed people, had changed him as well. Was the Elio he knew still there? For that matter, was the Oliver Elio knew?

“You look well,” Elio said, echoing his thoughts.

“You too.” He swallowed. “How are classes? I mean,” he stumbled. “You already told me in your letters, I guess. How was this week?”

“Good. Fine. And you?”

“Okay. Yeah, okay.” It was excruciating. This was a more sophisticated, more adult version of the chilly silences and brusque dismissals they had given each other on those early days when neither understood the depths of the other’s turmoil or the source of his distance. Now Oliver understood though, thought he would never understand anything as well as the polite smile on Elio’s face, and it made him want to cry.

“Why did you say yes?” he asked suddenly.

Elio understood. Of course he did. He tilted his head. “Why did you ask me to come?”

“You first.”

He tapped his fingers on the table, delicate pianist’s fingers that captured Oliver’s attention as sharply as always. Behind his lips Oliver could see him weighing answers. Finally, he said, “I came today for the same reason I sent you that note when I moved last year. Because I can’t stop touching the place you left, like a missing tooth.”

“Does it hurt?”

Elio gave him a look like a slow child. “What do you think?”

Oliver swallowed heavily and dropped his gaze. “It hurts.”

“So why did you ask me?”

“I don’t know.” That was partly true, but not entirely. “Because I’m a masochist too? Because I’m selfish?” Because you made me happier than I’ve ever been and I’m desperate for a piece of that happiness back? “Because I miss you?”

“I miss you too.” The last time he had said it, over the phone, his voice had been plaintive, full of pain. Now it was just honest, calm, a statement of fact, like missing Oliver was a part of his daily life and not a fraught confession.

Oliver felt shattered open but also relieved. The veneer was gone, and what was underneath hurt, but at least it was honest. Looking away and taking a few deep breaths to calm himself, he managed in a lighter tone, “How is the new Debussy derivative coming along?”

“It’s not derivative!” Elio exclaimed, and he was suddenly animated, the control falling away, talking with his hands as he mimed the keyboard motions and waved away the critiques of his mentor. Oliver laughed, and they talked about the undergraduate seminars he was teaching (“There’s only so much elementary analysis you can hear about Herodotus before wanting to saw your ears off”) and Elio’s composition rivalry with another girl in his program. (“Just because she can make anything sound like Tchaikovsky doing Jerry Lee Lewis doesn’t mean she’s not a hack at composing”). They sat until almost six o'clock, when it was full dark outside, and said goodbye in the biting cold on the sidewalk. Feeling once more the thrill of the illicit, they agreed to see each other again. They didn’t embrace, didn’t even shake hands, but Oliver could feel the rekindled connection between them like a physical touch.

It was like a hit of nicotine after trying to quit. Each one made the next easier, and each visit left him elated, happy, but with an itch under his skin wanting more. They agreed on a weekly lunch, but Oliver found himself making excuses to end up in Midtown in the evening after work, or running errands on a Saturday.

Elio turned twenty at the end of December, and they went out for Chinese food to celebrate, joking that it was a late Christmas dinner. Twenty felt momentous. They were in the same decade now. Elio, always mature for his age, was becoming an adult before his eyes, talking about squabbles with his roommates and budgeting to move into his own apartment. Oliver felt pride and longing well up in his chest.

The truth, the honest truth that Oliver could admit to himself now, was that Elio at seventeen had been too young to build anything solid together. His life had been too fluid and unformed to mesh with the established rhythms of an older person’s without destroying some of its overflowing potential. There had never been the possibility of anything lasting.

But now, at twenty, Elio was talking about plans for the future, five, even ten years away. He was going to work as a concert pianist while putting together his composing career. Already he was working with one of his professors on exposure for his original work. He would stay in New York, of course, because that’s where everything was. Did his eyes flicker to Oliver when he said that? Was he imagining it?

Their lunches settled into the beating heart of Oliver’s weekly rhythm, which was only slightly disrupted by the end of the school year. Elio stayed in the States, for the first time, instead of going back to Italy, working furiously on an individual study program, and Oliver’s workload was only marginally lighter than during term.

“Do you wish you were in Crema?” he asked some time in August.

They were walking through Washington Square Park, and heat was rising in shimmering waves. “In this stinking city in summer?” Elio rolled his eyes. “ _Quelle question_.” But he was smiling.

Elio’s third year of school hit hard, and their routine was pared down to hasty coffee when they could manage. Trish went to London for a month in the fall, and Oliver realized how much his life had come to revolve around the polarization between the two. Without having to make excuses for his whereabouts to Trish, his meetings with Elio had a different tenor, lighter and less charged. It was so comfortable that he called Trish, long distance, just to feel the surge of guilt and desire when he heard her voice. When he met her at JFK, he picked her up and held her for so long that she pounded on his shoulder to be put down. “C’mon, Oliver. I love you too, but I need to pee.”

Winter wrapped the city up in slush and ice. They went to his parent’s place for Hanukah, and endured the comments about children. “We heard you were traveling,” Oliver’s mother said to Trish. “That’s good. It won’t be the same when you have little ones.” Over wine after dinner, his father said, “I still think you should have gone into management. That academic salary isn’t much to support a family on.”

In the taxi home, Trish said, “You give in, and give in, and try to please them, and do what they want, and live the life you’re supposed to, and it’s never enough, is it? We could have two kids and go to synagogue every week and they would still find a way to criticize.” Silently, Oliver put a hand on her knee, and she closed her hand over his, nails digging into his palm.

He and Elio met as usual the day after Valentine’s Day, in a little deli on the north side of the Village. They were eating rugelach, listening to the owners argue in Yiddish, and discussing ancient languages.

“Oh, I got a hold of that new translation of Aeschylus you were talking about earlier last month,” Elio said, “and he certainly made some interesting choices about culturally dependent metaphor, but I can't say I think much of his lyricism.” He leaned forward, reaching for the ashtray to tap his cigarette, and the collar of his button-down gaped open revealing a series of purple bite marks on the tender skin beneath his clavicle. “I don’t approve of a translation that doesn’t celebrate lyricism.”

Oliver was transfixed, completely frozen by those marks on his throat. Of course he hadn't thought Elio was celibate, but to see the evidence of it before his eyes, close enough to touch made a hot and cold shutter run through him, like a breaking fever. It was not quite jealousy, not only lust, but a heady mix of the two.

“Oliver?”

He blinked, realizing he was hard in his slacks, and forced himself to focus on Elio’s face. “Sorry. Yes, the new Aeschylus.” But Elio had already figured it out. He pressed his fingers to the bruises, a pleased little smile starting on his lips. _Oh, you noticed._ He sat back in his chair, posture suddenly loose and inviting. This was a familiar Elio, one he hadn’t seen in almost four years, but instead of youthful bravado underlying the sensuality, there was adult confidence. There was intentionality to the way he played with his collar, teasing Oliver.

“Had a date yesterday. We went dancing in Harlem, and had sex on her roommate’s couch.” He grinned, and Oliver had a vivid memory of Elio at the breakfast table, announcing that he had almost had sex with Marzia, part power play, part confession. “It was Valentine’s day, after all.”

“Is she your girlfriend?”

Elio regarded him calmly. “No.”

“No. Right.” Oliver shook his head. It was none of his business. Deliberately, he got control of himself. “Anyway, you’re right it’s not the most graceful take on the _Orestia_.”

After saying goodbye to Elio, he took a taxi uptown, but got out five blocks from his apartment and walked the rest of the way in the frigid February slush, trying to clear his head. He had been clinging so hard to the boundaries between himself and Elio, and it felt as if one of them had been smashed, a jolt like missing a step on the stairs. The wind bit his cheeks and nose, searing his lungs. He welcomed it.

Trish was sitting on the counter in the kitchen, drinking scotch when he arrived, kicking her bare heels against the cabinets. He unwound his scarf and shrugged off his coat, still winded from the cold. Trish just watched him until he stilled, sensing something was wrong.

“Trish?”

“Are you cheating on me?” she asked, voice calm.

Oliver’s breath caught in his throat. “What makes you say that?”

“That wasn’t a no.”

“I’m not cheating on you.”

“Oh come on, Oliver. Don’t lie to me.” She held up a slip of paper, and passed it to him. _Let’s try that new café on 23 rd this week. Variety is the spice of life (Wm Cowper, 1785, did you know that? I had to look it up). Good luck with the Dean, see you soon. _

“Found it in the entry,” she said, arms crossed. “Must have fallen out of your coat.”

“I’m not,” he insisted. “I was with an old friend.” Her eyes narrowed and he swallowed. “... an old lover. We’ve been meeting for coffee but we haven’t done anything. We’re not going to.”

He expected her to shout, but she just tipped her head forward onto her chest and let out a gusty sigh. “Three years ago, this is when I would have said that I didn’t care who else you saw, and we would have broken up for six or eight months, and eventually remember that we miss each other and get back together and everything would be fine.” She laughed, humorlessly. “I miss that. It worked for us.”

When he held out his arms, she put down the glass of scotch and folded herself into them, pressing her face against his neck, and he breathed in the smell of her shampoo. “It’s not really on the table anymore,” he murmured.

She nodded into his shoulder. “I know.”

“I love you so much,” he whispered, trailing a hand up her thigh.

She squirmed. “Not tonight.”

“You don't want to?”

“I don't want you fucking me to prove something.”

“I'm not," he said.

She pulled back to look at him, clearly unconvinced, but let him slip his hand inside her panties and tilted her head back with a sigh as he fingered her. Her throat was long and pale. Bending his head, he bit down on her collarbone, sucking a red mark into the tender skin.

 

The next week he canceled his lunch with Elio, pleading business around mid-term exams. He used the spare time to get ahead on his lesson planning, staying late in the office until the department head stopped by to ask if he was alright. He went with Trish to a poetry reading by one of her friends, and for drinks afterward. They were being distant and polite with each other, but at least they weren’t fighting.

Ten days after last seeing Elio, he got a note. _Grow up. Meet me Monday, the usual._

Elio was already there when he arrived at their usual café, with his walkman on the table beside him, tapping his pen against his notebook as he transcribed. Halting inside the door, Oliver watched him, the way he had watched that summer before they had ever touched, with silent, fiercely tamped desire, and a hollow feeling of hopelessness.

When he sat, Elio pulled off his headphones. “I wasn’t sure you’d come.”

“Of course I came.” Meaning, _I’m the same as you._

“Why have you been avoiding me?”

Oliver took a deep breath. “My wife asked me if I was cheating on her.” It was the first time he had said that – _my wife._ Sometimes he mentioned Trish’s name just in passing, like he would any friend. She was an inevitable part of his life. But the words _my wife_ felt heavy on his tongue, like a reluctant confession.

“What did you say?”

“I said no.”

“And?”

He rubbed a hand across his chin, feeling the rasp of stubble and remembering how it would leave Elio’s mouth pink and raw after kissing. “And nothing. We aren’t, are we?” He hadn’t meant for it to sound like a real question.

“Does she know who I am?”

He dropped his voice, glancing around. Their usual Monday spot was in the Village, but it never felt safe to speak too loudly. “I told her I was meeting an old lover. But that there wasn’t anything between us now.”

Elio leaned forward. “Isn’t there, Elio?” He crooned his own name, barely audible, and it punched the breath out of his lungs. Before Oliver could gather himself enough to reply, Elio continued, “Does it matter if we’re having sex? Can you honestly say there’s nothing between us?”

Oliver was shaking his head, unsure himself whether it was denial or capitulation. “Elio, remember when I told you that we hadn't done anything to be ashamed of? I still believe that, and I don't want to do anything that we will regret.”

“Is it because I'm young? Or because we're both men?”

“ _No_. Maybe. It's because I'm married to someone else, and you and she both deserve better than that. You have a whole life ahead of you to be something else than my little secret.”

“I'm not saying we have to shack up together above a bath house in SoHo, or that I want to drop out of Juilliard to be your kept boy.” The adult calm had shattered; Elio was agitated and youthful. “I'm not asking you to leave your wife and take me to faculty dinners is on your arm. I’m saying, you left a piece of yourself in me. I carry you with me. Feelings I have for anyone else, part of that is you. You are me, and I am you. If we are sleeping together, or having coffee, or living three thousand miles apart, how can you imagine it makes any difference? Unless... you don’t feel the same way?”

Oliver swallowed, feeling like there was a chunk of iron in his throat. Reaching across the table, he took Elio’s notebook and the pen, and wrote two words above the transcription of Chopin. _Cor cordium._ Heart of hearts. Pushing it back across the table, he saw Elio flinch as he read it, emotions chasing each other across his face. When he looked up, his eyes were wet. “Come home with me.”

“We can’t,” Oliver whispered.

“We don’t have to do anything, I just... want to hold you.” Under the table, Elio’s leg pressed against the inside of his knee. With a creeping certainty, Oliver realized that all along Elio had been humoring him, giving him space, respecting his boundaries. But now, for the first time since he’d come to New York, Elio was fighting to get him back.

He could barely speak. “I don’t... we can’t... I don’t think I could just hold you,” he managed, and saw heated acknowledgement flare in Elio’s eyes. With that spoken, it felt as if a last, flimsy defense had been stripped away. The fiction they had been creating from their first letter shattered, and there was only the truth – that he was married, and that it didn’t matter.

His heart was pounding. Could he go back to Elio’s apartment, knowing it would mean breaking all his vows? But were they not already broken, had been from the moment he wrote Elio back that first day in September? Wasn’t that why he had been so ashamed all along, knowing that the physical act was the least part of adultery? Or perhaps there was no breaking them at all because Elio was part of him, and he part of Elio, so his vows were Elio’s too, and they kept them together. It was so simple, and if it was a lie, then it was a lie he wanted to believe.

Elio’s place was a tiny studio in Chelsea, only fifteen blocks from their café. They walked in silence, elbows bumping. With each step, Oliver expected to change his mind, to be overcome with horror at what he was about to do, but in fact it felt easier and easier, as if he was walking out of deep water.

With the door closed behind them, the apartment was dim with late afternoon shadows, and Elio’s face was blue and stark. “Are you nervous?”

Oliver wanted to laugh but couldn’t. Nervous wasn’t the word for what was straining under his sternum. “Are you?”

“Not anymore.” Curling his hands around the back of Oliver’s neck, Elio pulled him down for a kiss. His mouth tasted like coffee instead of peaches, like New York winter instead of Italian summer, but underneath it was deeply, painfully familiar. They clutched at each other, rocking back against the door. Oliver was already hard, could feel Elio’s erection against his hip.

They stumbled across the room, pulling at each other’s clothing, and toppled on the bed. Oliver yanked Elio’s shirt over his head and bent down to bite his neck, sucking a mark above his collar bone. Groaning, Elio arched under him, fingers digging into his arms. He kissed and licked his way down every inch of Elio’s torso, and took his cock in his mouth. Elio gasped and hissed through his teeth, squirming under him. “Oliver,” he gasped, “Oh, yes.”

Oliver licked off the salty sour taste of him, rubbing his own erection against the bed and savoring the velvety texture on his tongue. When he came, Elio smothered his cry in the pillow, and Oliver wished he hadn't. He wanted every piece of this, the smell, the taste, the sound of Elio's pleasure, the crick in his neck and twinge in his jaw. There was a sweet ache under his breastbone as he swallowed and sucked gently at Elio’s softening cock.

Loose and relaxed, Elio rolled over onto his stomach. “Do you want?” he mumbled.

Oliver pressed kisses along the tender yielding flesh of Elio's ass. “No. I want you to fuck me.” He grinned as Elio shivered and swore.

Elio stretched him open with his fingers and a tube of KY Jelly, while Oliver panted and tried to relax. He hadn’t done this since the last night in Rome with Elio, and it was like being stretched open again for the first time, painful and miraculous. “Enough. I'm ready.” He wanted it to hurt, wanted to sit down tomorrow and the day after and remember this.

They both shuddered as Elio pushed inside and Oliver felt sweat prickle on his chest, his whole body flushing. “You ok?” Elio managed.

“Yes. Yes, do it.” With a gasp, Elio begin to roll his hips, and Oliver groaned, struggling to keep his eyes open, needing desperately to watch.

Elio’s mouth was open, lips red and bitten, dark hair falling in his eyes, sweat shining on his shoulders. His thrusts were less clumsy than Oliver remembered, and he arched his back, hooking an ankle around Elio’s knee to pull them closer, trying to make him lose the composure he had learned with other partners since they had last been together. Elio whined, hips stuttering. “God, Oliver.”

Oliver cupped his cheek, pressing his thumb against those soft lips. “Say it,” he gasped, “Tell me what I am to you.”

Elio groaned. “Elio,” he panted, “Elio, Oliver, Elio.” His voice broke on his own name, and Oliver wrapped his arms around Elio’s shoulders and came all over their stomachs. Pressed deep inside him, Elio shuddered and sobbed as he followed. Oliver held him, in his arms, inside him, and felt like there was light under his skin, burning him away from the inside.

It was fully dark out by the time they lay side by side, skin stuck together with sweat and semen. Outside the window, orange streetlamps made false daylight. Elio’s head was nested in the hollow of Oliver’s shoulder, fingers trailing over his hip. “It's late,” he said softly. “What are you going to tell your wife?”

Oliver grimaced. “That I fell asleep at the office?”

“Does she know you sleep with men?” He sounded calm, curious.

“She knows I'm bisexual. She was one of the first people I told when I was still figuring it out as a teenager.” Suddenly it was easy to talk about; there were no more barriers between them, just part of Elio inside him and their two heartbeats filling up the dark room. Instead of having a second heartbeat straining beneath his ribs, his other heart was with him, in its own flesh, and he felt relaxed in his skin for the first time in four years, complete and at ease. “She’s my best friend.”

“I’m glad.”

Oliver craned his head to look down at Elio, but his face was hidden in shadow under his mop of hair. “Are you?”

“Yes.” He tilted his head up to look at Oliver, and his expression was open, honest. “I’m jealous, but I’m glad.”

It hurt, but he knew it was not meant to. Oliver squeezed his arm around Elio’s shoulders, feeling his eyes burn. “I’m sorry. Elio, I wish...” he choked on it, unable to fathom what solution he could wish for.

“I know,” Elio sighed. “We are the same, remember?”

“I’m sorry,” Oliver repeated, pressing his face into Elio’s hair and breathing in the smell of him. He could feel Elio’s heartbeat where their chests were pressed together.

“What are we going to do now, Oliver?” he whispered. “How can we go on like we have been?”

“I don’t know.” Taking a deep breath to regain control, Oliver rubbed his free hand over his face. “How can we not?”

“I think we have to stop meeting.” Elio’s voice shook. “I can’t... have this, and not have it.”

It felt like blow to the sternum, leaving Oliver winded and nauseous, but at the same time he knew instantly it was true. He admired again the bravery that Elio had from the beginning, which he himself would never possess. Closing his eyes, he nodded his agreement into the soft curls on his head.

 

They kept up an occasional correspondence, casual, painfully polite letters that in their very restraint told of the longing underneath, exhausting to write and devastating to receive. Months went by and they were exchanged less frequently.

Oliver got a small promotion that meant more hours and not much more pay, and when he was home, he tried to be a good husband to Trish, to concede in arguments rather than snapping back, to swallow his criticism, to compliment her and support her work. In some way it was a penance, and he sensed that she knew it too, but she said nothing about it. Often he felt as if he was walking on egg shells to avoid their usual tempestuous upheavals, and he spent as much time as he could justify at the university. Their uncomfortable equilibrium held as summer fell heavy on the city.

When they did fight, it was almost a relief, like a thunderstorm finally breaking after an oppressively hot afternoon. Years later, he couldn’t even remember what it had been about, he just remembered Trish screaming, throwing a paintbrush across the room and leaving a streak of acrylic red on the wall, remembered yelling back at her that she was crazy, _insane_ , why did I ever agree to marry you?

They collided in the middle of the room like they often did when they fought, something halfway between wrestling and foreplay. Usually it was sexually charged, brutal but controlled; scratching, biting, smacking and hair pulling helping anger dissolve into lust, but that night, for the first time it felt like they were actually trying to hurt one another.

It scared Oliver so badly that his anger evaporated, and he pushed her away, trying to deflect hands clawing at him. “Trish, Trish! Please, Trish, please. Stop. Trish!” Then she was sobbing instead of hitting him, leaning against his chest and he wrapped his arms around her and whispered, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, Trish, I love you, I’m sorry.”

They clung to each other on the living room rug, shaking, and then crawled into bed together and held each other until they both fell into exhausted sleep.

When Oliver woke up in the morning, bright mid-morning light was already streaming through the window, and he jolted upright.

“I called you in sick from work.” Trish was sitting against the headboard with her knees pressed to her chest. “We have to talk.”

His heart, already pounding with adrenaline, lurched.

She bit her lip. “I think we should get a divorce.”

It was exactly what he had been expected, but it hurt in the same deep, breathless way as hearing Elio say _We have to stop meeting._

“No,” he said, “No, we’ll do better, we’ll go to counseling. We’ll... no, Trish.”

Trish was shaking her head. “We should never have gotten married in the first place.”

“Don’t say that.”

“It’s true, and you know it’s true, too, if you’d stop being afraid of what your father will say and do what you want for once!”

Oliver took a deep breath. “That’s not fair.”

“No.” Her hair fell over her face as she tipped her head forward against her knees. “It’s not fair. I was scared too. Scared to fight with my parents. Scared I couldn’t make it as an artist. Scared I would never meet someone I trusted like you, even though I knew we don’t work as a couple.”

Oliver said nothing, twisting to look out the window. This was the most beautiful part of a summer day, bright morning before the heat set in.

“I’ve been thinking about this for a while.” He felt her hand on his bare shoulder, and looked up reluctantly. Morning light illuminated her pale face and the damp tracks of tears. “You’re my best friend, and we need to get a divorce before we destroy our friendship as well as our marriage, because, Ollie, I don’t think I would survive that.” Her voice broke, and he reached out to her, pulling her down into his arms.

They made love slowly on the sun-soaked sheets. Trish’s fingers dug into his hip hard enough to bruise when she came, and he smothering a sob in her shoulder as he followed. Afterward, they got up, showered separately, and made breakfast barefoot in the warm kitchen. Finally, with their empty plates between them on the table, Oliver put down his coffee cup and said, “You’re right.”

 

More than a year after he’d last seen Elio, he got a thick envelope from Professor Perlman. Trish was over for breakfast, making coffee in the kitchen. She’d had her own place for a month and a half but she was often over at their old apartment and they spoke almost every day. They were still untangling their possessions from one another, plowing slowly through the divorce paperwork, and presenting a unified front against both sets of parents. Despite hard conversations and long nights hashing out details over whiskey, they hadn’t really fought since the night they had decided to separate. It had always been like that between them, that after a break up they were at their best together. He should have remembered that before they got married, he reflected wryly.

Opening the package, Oliver found a short letter, containing the usual academic updates from Professor Perlman, and a magazine with one page corner folded down. On that page, under an article about a jazz violist, he found a short mention of _newcomer Elio Perlman, 22, graduating this year from Julliard and already an accomplished concert pianist and one of the most interesting original composers to surface in two decades. While drawing on elements of Chopin and Liszt, his style has a sweetness and clarity most reminiscent of early Bach. This young man is one to watch._

Trish entered the room with a cup of coffee. It was one of the first warm days of spring, and she was wearing a sundress, bare shoulders covered in freckles. She was so beautiful his chest hurt. Reaching out for her, he pulled her into a hug and pressed his face into her soft hair. “I love you so much,” he whispered. “I never want to lose you.”

“I know.” She pulled back to grin at him. “That’s why we’re getting a divorce, remember? Trust us to do everything exactly ass-backwards.” Noticing the magazine, she took it from his hand. “Since when do you read Gramophone?” Flipping to the folded page she said, “Perlman. Oh, isn’t that the family you stayed with in Italy? This is their son, then? He’s doing well for himself.” Oliver nodded silently. “Are you alright?”

“We were lovers.” He hadn’t realized he was about to say it until the words were already off his tongue.

Trish raised an eyebrow. “You and the Professor?”

Oliver swallowed. “Me and the son.”

“You and the...” Her eyes widened and she looked down at the article again. “Holy hell, Oliver. How old was he?”

“Seventeen.”

“Jesus. Jesus Christ.” Coffee sloshed over the rim of the cup and she set it down, putting both hands flat on the dining table, head lowered. “So, you went to Italy, fucked some kid all summer, and then came home and married me, to... what? Prove to yourself that you weren’t gay, or a pedophile?” Her shoulders were shaking, voice choked.

“No, no, Trish, of _course_ not. Marrying you was never about him, it was about us, about our families, you know it was...”

She tilted her head back, and he saw that she was laughing, although there were tears in her eyes. “I can’t believe you, Oliver.”

“Are you angry?”

“Am I _angry_? You do not get to ask me that right now.” She ran her hands through her hair. “Seventeen, _Jesus_ , he must really be something special.”

Oliver shrugged helplessly. “He is.”

“Trust you to fall for the teenage piano savant. Graduating from Julliard...” Her expression sharpened, incredulous, “He was the lover you were meeting, wasn’t he? _Fuck,_ Oliver.”

“I wasn’t lying when I said we didn’t do anything! Except once.”

“Except once?” she repeated, voice shrill.

“I’m sorry! We never meant to. It just happened. You can’t divorce me again,” he added, hands raised. She stared at him, wide eyed, and then collapsed into a chair, howling with laughter.

“Just happened," she gasped. “The nerve of you, I can’t believe it.” He shifted from foot to foot, waiting while she laughed until she wheezed. Finally, she caught her breath, pushing her hair out of her face and wiping her wet eyes.

“Are you alright?” he asked warily.

“Give me a minute. I’m going to go make coffee.”

“You just made some.”

“You drink it. I’m going to make more.” Getting up, she vanished into the kitchen in a swirl of her floral skirt. He heard the click and hiss of the propane range being lit, listened to the soft shuffle of her footsteps as she paced the kitchen. Traffic rumbled by outside, and the fan in the window whirred. The kettle shrilled.

Trish emerged with a new, steaming cup, and leaned against the door frame. Afternoon light made her glow like one of her paintings. “Do you love him?”

They had never used that word, he and Elio, though he had said it so often and so easily to Trish. But there was only one true answer. He nodded.

“But you never told him. Of course you didn’t, he was just a kid, you were trying to let him move on, while you pined helplessly and married me to please your father. You stupid goose, Oliver.” She shook her head, and his heart squeezed at how well she knew him. “How do you get yourself neck deep in these messes? It’s like the great afikomen mix-up of 1971, but with hearts instead of matzah.”

That startled a laugh out of him. “You’re taking this well.”

She raised her eyebrows. “I am extremely well adjusted, and my therapist is extremely well paid. Anyway, you’re not my husband anymore, just my stupid best friend, who is clearly still a sentimental mess about this boy.”

It wasn’t worth denying. He shrugged.

“You should write to him.”

“No, I shouldn’t. It would just open everything up again.”

“Why do I always have to be the sensible one? Look, he’s either moved on in which case you’ll get some closure and he won’t be bothered, or he’s nursing his heartbreak and pining just like you are, in which case it can only benefit you both.”

Oliver’s eyes stung. He didn’t deserve her, he never had. “I love you.”

Trish rolled her eyes. “Don’t tell me, tell him.”

 

That night he sat alone at the dining table, feeling the emptiness of the apartment around him. He would have to get a smaller place eventually, didn’t like rattling around in what used to be their space. Couldn’t really afford it alone either, not without help from his parents. And help from his parents was going to be extremely unlikely given the letter he was about to write, and where it might take him. Taking a deep breath, he picked up a pen.

_Elio- I hope you are well. Your father sent along the review you got in Gramophone. Congratulations! I noticed that the reviewer also has an appreciation for young Bach – good taste. Really, I’m writing to tell you that Trish and I are getting a divorce. It was a mutual decision, we were never going to make it for the long haul, and we both lied to ourselves for a long time about that. We’re still friends. I don’t tell you this with any expectations, I just thought you should know._

He hesitated over the closing. Sincerely. Best wishes. Yours. With Love. Amor Aeternus.

_As always, Oliver_

 

Two weeks later, he got an envelope in the mail. His hands shook as he ripped it open. Inside was a single sheet of lined paper ripped from a notebook, filled with music notes, and above the transcription in his own handwriting, the words _Cor cordium._ Written beside it, in a different color of ink, was a short line in Elio’s familiar hand.

 _We are still the same._ _Lunch?_

**Author's Note:**

> These boys ate my brain, I hope this felt as cathartic to you as it did to me.  
> I wanted to deal with AIDS but every time I tried it felt like I was derailing the real heart of the story. Just know that Elio is having VERY safe sex, and at some point Oliver checked in awkwardly about this.  
> Comments are love!


End file.
